Iman had decided to take up poetry again.

It was nothing if not slow work. The moment she picked up a pen, it felt as though her brain were full of cotton. When she tried to put the swirling images in her head into words, it was so hard to get any sort of grip on where to start. From the beginning? At the end? In the tumultuous middle where nothing is yet decided?

But there was something freeing in the eking out of creation, in the seeing of her jumbled letters marching down the margins of the empty pages she's carried for so long. It was something that she had long forgotten the thrill of and had not until now realized that she still yearned for a taste of it.

When had she stopped? She couldn't remember the exact moment. It had been shortly after arriving in Skyrim, of that much she was certain. At the moment when her life had ceased to be about dreaming and more about doing. Her dreams had been lost in the taste of stolen pleasure, consumed first by adventure and then by the drudgery of the quiet life that followed.

Who was she, really? What was it that she had wanted? What exactly was it that she wanted now?

A blank page looked up at her, along with the crumpled one that she had just torn out and thrown aside. The ink was still wet on it and had smeared her hands as she'd crushed it between them.

She wiped the ink off on the dirty napkin she had forgotten to toss in with the laundry after breakfast and began again.

Just write, she told herself. No matter how silly or foolish or bland. You can make it perfect later, but you'll never get to there if you never start.

The ink dripped from her pen on the page in an ugly blot. She ignored it, though it would have irked her to no end if she were years younger.

She closed her eyes for a moment, running a mental comb through the tangle of thoughts in her head.

There was a bird in a gilded cage, she wrote, the fresh words gleaming darkly in the lantern light.

Several minutes of silent staring passed before she could go on.

beautiful and lonely

her plumage the envy of all

her song, ascending to heights of sweetness

and bitterness alike

but no one could hear her voice

her cage swung so high above the city lights

and her song, weak from

With a jolt, the trance was broken. For a second, she peered at the words as though they had come out of someone else's pen, someone else's mind.

And then she realized where the sound had come from.

The doorknob on her guest room door was turning.

No one had ever disturbed her before - not the Emissary, not the other inquisitors, not even a single member of the household staff.

She stared, transfixed by the turning of the knob, unable to move for the eternity it took.

The door was pushed open with a quiet squeak of the hinges.

A Redguard woman, her hair done in braids that trailed to the small of her back and glittered with glass beads of all colors and sizes, stood there, regarding her with narrowed eyes. She was wearing a red chiton, held up on her shoulders by a set of gleaming pins. Her bracelets rattled as she closed the door softly behind her.

"Excuse me." Iman said, suddenly gaining enough composure to be irked. "The party isn't in here. This is a private room."

"Oh, I'm well aware." she answered, her voice a monotone as she took a single step forward. "Iman, of House Suda."

Her shadow looked huge on the wall, looming over the scene in the flickering light of the lantern. As she moved, the light rippled over her bare arms, far too well muscled to be that of a misdirected noblewoman.

Iman's heart was beating faster. Her mouth was dry. She stood up, her legs getting tangled with the legs of her chair and frantically kicked herself free, sending the chair skidding across the floor.

"Who are you?" she gasped.

Her mind was racing. How had they found her? Who had sold her away?

"What...what do you want?"

The woman took two more steps toward her, deadly silent. Iman backed two more steps away. She had almost reached the back wall. There was nowhere else she could go, save for under the bed itself and somehow, she doubted the efficacy of that plan.

"I-I have nothing." she cried out, her voice cracking. "I'm not worth a-any..."

There was a knife in her pocket, she remembered, in the rush of frantic thoughts, its placement as much a part of her morning routine as washing her face or scrubbing her teeth. She would have but a single moment to use it, if that. If she were to let her come close and lunge at the opportune time, there was a chance, however slight, that maybe-

"Why?" the woman asked, her voice barely more than a breath of air, her eyes, inestimably sad.

Iman blinked in surprise. There was a lump in her throat and tears in her eyes. The sound of crackling flames and screeching birds filled the inside of her mind.

"I…don't…know…" she sputtered out. "I…I was young and lost and t-there was so much I didn't understand and, a-and"-

She hiccuped helplessly as tears poured down her cheeks.

She was going to die. She deserved to die.

The woman sighed and it was as though all the air had been let out of her in a single breath. She closed her eyes and raised her right hand.

Now, Iman's survival instincts screamed at her, NOW.

Her hand slipped into her pocket and curled around the knife.

And then her whole body froze.

In the woman's hand was a blinding beam of light that was agony to look at, but look, she did, tears streaming from her aching eyes. She saw it take form in her hand, a blade of sharpness beyond comprehension, of reality surpassing the very plane they stood on, ethereal vines curling from its hilt, up her arm and down her spine.

She opened her eyes and her glare was as icy as the glaciers of Skyrim.

Notes:

MOAR deep lore that didn't make it into the story proper:

The Bosmer falconer who was the sole witness to Iman's escape went into hiding for years after the war, both to recover from his ordeal and for fear of assassination by the Thalmor or retaliation from House Suda itself. It was only decades later, after the Thalmor threat had been pretty well eradicated from Hammerfell and the power of House Suda had waned, that he felt safe enough to return to Taneth to deliver his testimony. Hence, why the search for Iman started so long after the event.

Up until then, the remaining members of House Suda had assumed that Iman had died the night of the attack, though why she would have been anywhere except the safety of her room was a question they could not answer. The revelation of the truth brought great shame upon the house and eroded much of what little political clout they had left in the city.